E3 2012: Hauppauge

Hauppauge, makers of some great tuner cards and recording products, didn't have that much to show at this year's E3. What they had on hand were displays of older products, but they did have one thing new.

The StreamEez takes a source such as a camcorder or a game console and produces stream-able content to services like Justin.TV or Ustream. The inputs consist of the traditional component, RCA, and HDMI so you have a good array of connection options to choose from. HDMI streaming will be limited to non-copy protected content, of course.

You just plug the StreamEez into your computer via USB and using the Hauppauge software, start streaming away the content that's fed it. You do need to plug the unit into a wall socket as it's just USB 2.0 and it wouldn't draw enough from that connection to power the StreamEez unit itself. I did ask if they thought about maybe using USB 3.0 as that has a higher power draw and perhaps do away with the plug and make it a really portable solution. Hauppauge will be looking at implementing USB 3.0 in the near future, so maybe we'll have an option one day to use StreamEez without being tethered to an outlet.

Still, StreamEez looks like a nice simple solution for high quality streaming content at a lower bit rate.

I also heard of future products coming soon involving cable card with four tuners as a possibility and definitely a network solution just like Silicon Dust's HDHome Run Prime so that'll be something to look forward to. Silicon Dust's product gives you three tuners using one cable card or six tuners with two cable cards while Hauppauge is looking for a quad tuner network solution with one cable card as their offering.

Finally, little news was disclosed on their next HD PVR product and HDMI will be on board, but not much else was talked about in this area.

StreamEez looks great for those that want an easy solution to stream content they produce, but the future items that Hauppauge hinted at has me excited on what's to come with the company.